, History of Agricultural Rent in England 13 



many cases became practically peasant 

 proprietors or yeomen. 



I shall now try to show how this 

 great revolution was effected. It is one 

 of the best examples on record of the 

 influence of the great economic forces that 

 are always at work beneath the surface of 

 society, whatever may be the law of the 

 land, or the compulsion of custom. It 

 shows also that in some respects the 

 growth of the money power has been the 

 principal agent in the amelioration of the 

 lot of the masses of the people, for in this 

 period, and for long after, the masses of 

 the people were attached to the soil. 



The great agency of economic progress 

 in the mediaeval period was the conversion 

 of what is called a natural economy into 

 a money economy, or the substitution of 

 money payments for payments in labour 

 and in produce of various kinds. The 



